click on photo to enlarge

What area residents were talking about 52 years ago

Noted below are news items retrieved from local newspapers published in early July 1963.

Uwchlan residents and the township’s supervisors expressed frustration when the secretary of the State Department of Highways denied a request for a traffic light at the intersection of Routes 100 and 113 because an investigation of the issue had determined that “the volume of traffic passing through the intersection (less than seven vehicles per minute between 4-5 PM) is not sufficient to justify the operation of stop and go signals….However, due to the apparent accident potential at this location, we feel that the installation of flashing beacons is justified.” But residents claimed that there had been two fatal accidents in two months at the intersection, despite the fact that stop signs were already were installed there. The residents also said the secretary’s vehicle count during peak traffic hours was inaccurate. The supervisors suggested to Mrs. Samuel Windham, a township resident and a school teacher, that she should circulate a petition, in favor of a stop light, and forward it to Harrisburg.

The Downingtown Joint Elementary School Board gave a committee of three West Bradford Township school directors authority to get appraisals from two independent realtors on a tract, which, if purchased, would be the site of a new elementary school with a capacity of 800 pupils. And the State Health Department had to approve the site’s sewage treatment capability, since West Bradford had no public sewer system and the school had to be built near a water supply to serve a treatment plant. The new school would eventually replace the Marshallton School.

Downingtown Council approved changes in the borough’s health code, regarding quarantine periods for childhood diseases, so they would conform with state requirements. The seven-day quarantine period for German measles was eliminated, while the periods for measles and mumps was cut from ten to seven days. The quarantine whooping cough was kept at four weeks. The conflict between the borough and state codes arose last winter in the Downingtown Joint School District, when children from surrounding townships, who were governed by the state code, were not sent back to school until the borough’s quarantine period was completed.